Tuesday, March 29, 2016

The Mother’s Interviews with Dr. Indra Sen about the Supramental Manifestation of 29 February 1956

The Mother has the concrete experience of the descent of the Supramental Consciousness on Earth on February 29,1956.

The Golden Day

‘The lights had been turned off at the Playground after the reading of some passages from The Synthesis of Yoga and the children's questions. They all sat on the ground in a semicircle around her. One heard the sea in the distance, and the beam of the lighthouse swept over the top of the walls – two short flashes, one long. It was the “Wednesday meditation.” One saw Mother in the dark, seated in her low chair, bent somewhat forward, with a Plumeria flower between her motionless fingers. She always looked white, this Mother, even when dressed in red or in whatever colour, as if something radiated through her body, a kind of white luminosity at times so dense that it became visible to our materialistic eyes. And there were the disciples, silent…'

1 [This is how a French disciple, present there on 29 February 1956, gives his impression of the moment at the Playground when the Supramental manifested in the atmosphere of the Earth.]

The Mother herself noted down that very evening: ‘This evening the Divine Presence, concrete and material, was there present amongst you. I had a form of living gold, bigger than the universe, and I was facing a huge and massive golden door which separated the world from the Divine. As I looked at the door, I knew and willed, in a single movement of consciousness, that “the time has come,” and lifting with both hand a mighty golden hammer I struck one blow, one single blow on the door and the door was shattered to pieces. Then the supramental Light and Force and Consciousness rushed down upon earth in an uninterrupted flow.'

Later she explained in a conversation with K.D. Sethna: ‘The whole thing is not so much a vision or an experience as something done by me. I went up into the Supermind and did what was to be done. There was no need for any verbal formulation as far as I was concerned, but in order to put it into words for others I wrote the thing down. Always in writing, a realization, a state of consciousness gets somewhat limited: the very act of expression narrows the reality to some extent.'

The significance of this event cannot be overestimated. What Sri Aurobindo and the Mother had been working for since the beginning of their Avataric yoga was now realized. What had they been working for? To bring the supramental, i.e. divine Consciousness down on Earth, to insert it into the earthly evolution and thus make the decisive evolutionary step possible by which one day a divinized species will be present on Earth in a material body…

The manifestation of the Supramental on 29 February 1956 meant, among other things, that the future embodiment of the supramentally conscious being beyond Man, of the divine Superman, was now assured, as it was assured that the human aspiration throughout countless millenniums was being fulfilled: the world would not always be a place of frustration, suffering and death. Like everything else in the One Divine it would be able to materially develop its essential divine nature. K.D. Sethna wrote in his diary: ‘I wonder when the world will realize that [on 29 February 1956] the greatest event in history took place.'

The Mother announced the Event in the Bulletin of April 1956. There she published the following four lines under the heading ‘29 February:

'Lord, Thou hast willed and I execute:A new light breaks upon the earth,A new world is born.The things that were promised are fulfilled'.

This was a modification of four great lines from her diary entry on 25 September 1914, forty-two years before:

'The Lord has willed and Thou dost execute:A new Light shall break upon the earth.A new world shall be bornAnd the things that were promised shall be fulfilled'.

Tellingly, the future expectation had become the present realization. At the same time, she had the following declaration published, under the date 24 April 1956:‘The manifestation of the Supramental upon earth is no more a promise but a living fact, a reality. It is at work here, and one day will come when the most blind, the most unconscious, even the most unwilling shall be obliged to recognize it.'

Henceforth in the Ashram 29 February was called the Golden Day.

From ‘The Mother, The Story of Her Life' by Georges Van Vrekhem, pp 415 – 425

29 February 1956

During the common meditation on Wednesday“This evening the Divine Presence, concrete and material, was there present amongst you. I had a form of living gold, bigger than the universe, and I was facing a huge and massive golden door which separated the world from the Divine.

As I looked at the door, I knew and willed, in a single movement of consciousness, that “the time has come”, and lifting with both hands a mighty golden hammer I struck one blow, one single blow on the door and the door was shattered to pieces.

Then the supramental Light and Force and Consciousness rushed down upon earth in an uninterrupted flow.”

The Mother’s Interviews with Dr. Indra Sen about the Supramental Manifestation of 29 February 1956

Dear Friends,

Dr. Indra Sen (13 May 1903—14 March 1994) was a noted scholar, author and educationist who obtained his Master’s degree in Philosophy and Psychology from the University of Delhi and Ph.D from the University of Freiburg in Germany. He taught Philosophy and Psychology at the Hindu College in Delhi. In 1939 he visited Pondicherry and soon became a staunch follower of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. In 1943 his wife Lilawati was asked by the Mother (who renamed her Violette) to settle down in Sri Aurobindo Ashram as inmates along with her two children. Dr. Sen also joined the Ashram in 1945. He had presented several famous papers on psychology in academic circles but for him the study of psychology was not sufficient without a corresponding spiritual realization because, according to his daughter Dr. Aster Patel, he wanted a realization in consciousness of the spiritual truths of existence. In the works of Sri Aurobindo he found the basis of a wholeness which ‘would make the experience a fact of personal corroboration.’ He coined the term ‘Integral Psychology’ which was accepted by Sri Aurobindo as the proper term for presenting his psychological work.

As the year 2016 marks the sixtieth anniversary of the Supramental Manifestation upon earth, two interviews of the Mother (which took place on 13 May and 22 May respectively) with Dr. Indra Sen about the said manifestation are published in the online forum of Overman Foundation.

With warm regards,Anurag BanerjeeFounder,Overman Foundation.

*

13 May 1956

The Mother: Were you here on the 29th February?

Indra Sen: Yes, Mother, I was here. I arrived the same day in the morning and I was present at the “Questions and Answers” and the Meditation.

The Mother: Did you feel anything then?

Indra Sen: No, Mother. All I was aware of is that it was a calm and quiet meditation. It is only on the Darshan Day, the 24th April, that a vague and faint sense of reality of the New Force came to me. And since then the feeling of it has been growing, but I don’t have a clear and concrete sense of its existence.

The Mother: Well, what happened was something tremendous. Suddenly a flood of light came pouring forth, as if the divine gate had been thrown wide open. It continued for twenty minutes. Or, rather, I watched it for twenty minutes and then stopped the meditation. I could not carry on the meditation indefinitely—you know how restless people become.

When the light was pouring, I thought that at the end of the meditation I would find everybody knocked out, lying flat. But when I opened my eyes I found them as after any meditation. I myself had to make a special effort to come into my external being and it was with great difficulty that I could utter a word.

Indra Sen: Was this advent unexpected?

The Mother: Absolutely. But all my greatest experiences have come like that. I am in my usual consciousness and they come suddenly, as if to show their reality in the fullest contrast and vividness. They have the best value when first received in this way. When one is informed beforehand, the mind begins to play a part. On the present occasion, when the mind came in I was on our side of the divine gate: there was then just a magnificent light, nothing more. Those who live in their emotions had a better chance to feel things than those who live in their minds.

Indra Sen: What should I do to acquire a sense of the Supermind?

The Mother: The Supermind will work itself out—by the decision of the Supreme. Sri Aurobindo was instrumental in bringing it. The working of the Supermind in my body has gone on since the 5th December, 1950. It has been a progressive individual working; so I thought things would go on like that. But in January this year Sri Aurobindo appeared to me two or three times and it was as if he indicated that the Supermind was coming on a universal scale.

What has come has got engulfed at present and it has to work itself out. Nature did not reject it—she could not. The Supreme decided that the time had come and He released the Force. But the Inconscient has covered it up. It can be felt in the subtle-physical, but in the physical there is hardly anything yet. The manifestation is only a little more than two months old and it will show itself gradually. I can definitely feel it in the subtle-physical, but my sensitiveness is perhaps a little unusual… Two disciples here in the Ashram and three outside simultaneously had rare experiences as a result of what had happened.

A marked difference has now come in our Yoga. Things that were easy are now achieved without effort. Things that appeared difficult appear easy. Things impossible seem now achievable and likely.

The pouring of the Supermind is constant, but at Balcony time every morning it is more concentrated.

People have been here twenty to thirty years—talking of the Supermind’s coming and prepared for it, as it were—yet they did not notice it when it came!

The manifestation was a cosmic phenomenon and I took time to return to this individual self and it was difficult to speak the first word.

In half an hour I formulated the whole experience and wrote it down.

22 May 1956

The Mother: Things are now all changed for me—radically changed.

Indra Sen: How, Mother?

The Mother: Previously everything worked under the pressure of the Mind of Light. Sri Aurobindo secured this working when he left his body. Now it is the Supermind that directly guides and governs. The manifestation is just over two and a half months old and yet a new situation—an absolutely new situation—has come into being.

What has happened now I call a manifestation and not a descent, because it is not an individual event: the Supermind has burst forth into universal play. It has become a principle at constant work upon all earth—a possibility of a general order, as when the mind was first diffused over the earth.

1 comment:

These sentences of The Mother fascinated me most|:''In the supramental creation there will no longer be any religions.The whole life will be the expression ,the flowering into formsof the divine Unity manifesting in the world.''----If we look at the world with its many disputes about religions today, is this a hope for the mankind.---The manifestation of the Supramental on 29 February 1956 is a turning point in human history.The Mother told, that ‘'The manifestation of the Supramental upon earth is no more a promise but a living fact, a reality''----But this way will be long and hard one; how will react the ordinary man?